Key Stimulus Graphs

Krugman posted Key Stimulus Graphs "I thought it might be useful to put up a few graphs that are key to how I think about the sad tale of fiscal policy in the Great Recession and afterwards."

It's good. The first one point out that no we haven't seen rising inflation even though conservatives have been predicting it since the start of stimulus and the fed's monetary policy. The second shows that austerity doesn't work by plot the UK vs other European nations. And the third points out that the original theories on how the economy would bounce back without a real recovery plan we way too optimistic. It all points to one thing, we need more stimulus or we'll just keep staying in this mess.

Why Winter Endurance Athletes Compete In So Many Races

Scientific American answers Why Winter Endurance Athletes Compete In So Many Races "Cross-country skiers often collapse due to exhaustion at each race's end, only to come back a day or two later and compete again at seemingly superhuman levels. Speed skaters racing on the traditional large oval maintain a painful crouch at speeds greater than 30 mph in race after race throughout the games. How do they do it? And why don't elite runners run in as many distance events at the Summer Olympics?

Sports scientists say that the endurance sports of the winter games are more like bicycling or swimming than running. There just isn't as much pounding on the joints or the muscles, for example. Therefore, athletes can recover faster, and compete in more and longer races in the Winter Olympics than in the summer games."

New Highly Radioactive Leak at Japan's Fukushima Plant

Scientific American reports New Highly Radioactive Leak at Japan's Fukushima Plant "The operator of Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant said on Thursday that 100 metric tons of highly contaminated water had leaked out of a tank, the worst incident since last August, when a series of radioactive water leaks sparked international alarm.

Tokyo Electric Power Co told reporters the latest leak was unlikely to have reached the ocean. But news of the leak at the site, devastated by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, further undercut public trust in a utility rocked by a string of mishaps and disclosure issues."

Winter Olympics

I was pretty happy when the Sochi Winter Olympics started. Many of my friends aren't interested but to me, some odd sports every four years (or two depending on how you count) is fun. Every four years I can be interested in curling. Or biathlon, that combination of shooting and cross-country skiing I never could have come up with on my own. I'm not a skier but the old opening of the Wide World of Sports mean I'll always be interested in seeing someone slide down an icy mountain just barely in control. Nostalgia for the miracle on ice is only reason I'm interested in Olympic ice hockey. It's on regularly and I don't really pay attention and now it's even the same competitors as are in the NHL. No hockey doesn't qualify as an "odd sport". Figure skating does but I'm less interested in it than others. There are only so many times I can watch basically the same routine over and over.

And that brings me to my problem with the Winter Olympics. There aren't enough sports. By my count there are basically 9 sports and they have some (perfectly fine) variations. A speed skating sprint is a different thing from a 10k just like Usain Bolt isn't a marathoner. My list is:

• Figure Skating
• Speed Skating, Short Track Speed Skating
• Downhill Skiing
• Cross Country Skiiing
• Ski Jumping
• Snowboard: slopestyle, halfpipe, cross
• Luge, Bobsled, Skeleton
• Curling
• Hockey

I've come to terms with not really understanding the difference between downhill skiing, slalom, giant slalom and Super G (let alone combined). At least it seems to be various different trails that they ski down. Moguls are different too and while I have friends that like skiing them, I find watching the world's best do it really boring. Adding a small jump at the end doesn't help, particularly compared to the other jumping events.

This year I've found the snowboarding the most interesting. It started with Slopestyle, which I had never seen before and was just amazed at. Halfpipe is similarly amazing and sure, why not have some downhill racing on snowboards too. I like that they make it more interesting in snowboard cross and have several people racing at once. So that was fun, but then I see skiers do the slopestyle and even the halfpipe tracks! A. that seems crazy, B. why do skiers have to do the same thing, they have their own sports. Is cross-country snowboarding coming next? Or snowboard biathlon? Though I do wonder what kinds of tricks Shaun White could do in snowboard jumping with that 125m hill. At least they got rid of ski ballet.

Luge is fine, but after watching men's singles and women's singles and then men's doubles and women's doubles and then skeleton and then bobsled in the various combinations, it's more than enough. There was even a luge relay! It's all the same track! I don't know how many times I can hear an announcer talk about turn 5 or 14.

Speed skating is fine but each gender has five different distances and then there's team pursuit for each. Then add short track speed skating which is more exciting because of crashes (it's seems like ice roller derby) but it's also three distances for each gender and then relays for each. It seems like if they have to build a separate venue for it they want two weeks worth of use out of it.

Biathalon has the same problem, there are 11 biathlon events at the olympics, plus 12 cross-country events which is just biathlon without the guns! Then there are three Nordic Combined events which is cross-country with only those competitors that are also crazy enough to also do ski jumping. Maybe someone else will figure out this odd relationship and add guns to ski jumping.

There's also way too much figure skating. They've added the team competition which seems similar to what they do in gymnastics where the teams go first but then each competitors' scores also count for qualifiers in the individual events. But it's not the same because it's not the same athletes in each of the events. It's different people doing the individuals and pairs and dancing and they even seem to be doing the same routines in the team and individual events. Gymnastics does more (different) events and everyone has to do all the disciplines. I think they get it all done in the first week while figure skating drags on for the whole two weeks.

The wikipedia page says there are 98 events over 15 disciplines in 7 sports. I think they need to find more disciplines not events. At this rate they'll be a curling relay or short track hockey. And no, I don't really know what those new events might be.

Spike Jonze uses close-ups to teach us about him in Her

Apparently The A.V. Club has a column called Internet Film School. I found the latest entry pretty interesting, Spike Jonze uses close-ups to teach us about him in Her.

Update: The other columns in Internet Film School are quite good too.

Jason Jones Live From Sochi-ish - Better Off Red

Jason Jones on The Daily Show has been doing some great segments from Russia. In this one he points out how modern day Russia is the ultimate Republican dream-state. (I'm embedding this video, let me know if you have auto play problems.)

The Daily Show
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What America's Economic Activity Looks like Split in Half

What America's Economic Activity Looks like Split in Half "So what this map is showing that 50% of all the money generated in the United States comes from a tiny proportion of the country in geographical terms. It is of course much more of an even split in terms of population."

It came from reddit user atrubetskoy and the linked to article has links to two of his versions of this map (this is the 2nd version).

Technological progress and deflation.

Responding to something from Marc Andreessen, Matthew Yglesias points out that Technological progress and deflation by explaining in simple terms what deflation is. Good stuff.

The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks' Most Devious Scam Yet

Following up on the NY Times story from last August about Goldman Sachs manipulating the aluminum markets Matt Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone, The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks' Most Devious Scam Yet "Banks are no longer just financing heavy industry. They are actually buying it up and inventing bigger, bolder and scarier scams than ever."

He keeps it a little saner than usual and does about as a good as anyone at explaining the complex schemes. He definitely makes a case that we should limit banks to, well, banking.

The One Rich Guy Who Owns Everything

Tom Tomorrow nails it.

Why Are We Adopting the Stupidest Possible Payment System in the US?

Kevin Drum wants to know Why Are We Adopting the Stupidest Possible Payment System in the US? "In any case, we're finally getting chip-and-PIN in the United States starting in 2015. But in possibly the stupidest decision in the history of payment networks, we're actually getting chip-and-signature cards. Why? I've been unable to find a straight answer to this."

After 400 years, mathematicians find a new class of shapes

Ars Technica writes After 400 years, mathematicians find a new class of shapes "Platonic solids are generically termed equilateral convex polyhedra. In the millennia since Plato's time, only two other collections of equilateral convex polyhedra have been found: Archimedean solids (including the truncated icosahedron) and Kepler solids (including rhombic polyhedra). Nearly 400 years after the last class was described, mathematicians claim that they may have now identified a new, fourth class, which they call Goldberg polyhedra. In the process of making this discovery, they think they’ve demonstrated that an infinite number of these solids could exist."

The Comcast/TWC Merger: As Big Cable Gets Bigger, Your Bill Will, Too

YahooTech's The Comcast/TWC Merger: As Big Cable Gets Bigger, Your Bill Will, Too is the best article I've seen on the topic.

xkcd: Frequency

Today's xkcd: Frequency is fun.

Bruce Schneier Talk on NSA at MIT

Bruce Schneier gave a talk this week at MIT called, NSA Surveillance and What To Do About It. The video is now online and I can't embed it so go to the page. It's about 40 mins long followed by 15 mins of questions. Here's the description:

Edward Snowden has given us an unprecedented window into the NSA's surveillance activities. Drawing from both the Snowden documents and revelations from previous whistleblowers, this talk describes the sorts of surveillance the NSA conducts and how it conducts it. The emphasis will be on the technical capabilities of the NSA, and not the politics or legality of their actions. I will then discuss what sorts of countermeasures are likely to frustrate any nation-state adversary with these sorts of capabilities. These will be techniques to raise the cost of wholesale surveillance in favor of targeted surveillance: ubiquitous encryption, target dispersal, anonymity tools, and so on.

It's the best summary of the NSA surveillance story I've seen.

Also, he wrote in The Atlantic this week, Everything We Know About How the NSA Tracks People's Physical Location

Stupid Arguments About Obamacare Job Projections

Regular readers will notice I've been blogging a little less, particularly on politics. The truth is I've found less and less to be interested in. There haven't really been new issues and there haven't really been new ideas. And the arguments are getting dumber and dumber. So a few weeks ago the CBO released a report on Obamacare. If you follow good sites you saw stories like WonkBlog's The good, bad and ugly of CBO’s new Obamacare projections. If you followed most of the mainstream media (not even just Fox) for a few days you heard reports of just the last bit that WonkBlog article and you heard it presented wrong.

Most said that the CBO said Obamacare would cost 2 million jobs by 2017. As was pointed out for the next several days they said that that there will be 2 million fewer workers and workers aren't jobs (remember there are 3 unemployed people now for each available job, that's the difference). The bulk of the reason for this is that now many workers stay in a job just for the health insurance. If they had another way to get it, they'd stay at home with their family or retire or something (like maybe go on an extended sabbatical). That makes sense.

So I have a folder of bookmarks to articles on this and was waiting for the facts to settle before writing a post. And that got delayed a bit. Today I see that MIT economist (and MA Healthcare Law Godfather) Jonathan Gruber replied to a recent New York Times Economix column by Casey Mulligan with a good post, Obamacare Critics Still Tell Just One Side of the Jobs Story. He shreds Mulligan for getting the facts of the report wrong, ignoring arguments that work against him and for misrepresenting Gruber and Krugman's view on the topic. Krugman also replied with the subtlety titled, Stupidity in Economic Discourse.

So that's that. Now I can delete that CBO bookmarks folder. At some point I'll get the to Bridgegate one and the several NSA ones.

Big leap for fusion: more energy produced than spent igniting fuel

Ars writes Big leap for fusion: more energy produced than spent igniting fuel "Researchers in the US have overcome a key barrier to making nuclear fusion reactors a reality. In results published in Nature, scientists have shown that they can now produce more energy than put into igniting fuel, at least on an experimental scale. The use of fusion as a source of energy remains a long way off, but the latest development is an important step toward that goal."

"During the fusion process, smaller atoms fuse into larger ones, releasing huge amounts of energy. To achieve this on Earth, scientists have to create conditions similar to those at the center of the Sun, which involves creating very high pressures and temperatures. There are two ways to achieve this: one uses lasers and is called inertial confinement fusion (ICF), another deploys magnets and is called magnetic confinement fusion (MCF). Omar Hurricane and colleagues at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory opted for ICF, with the help of 192 high-energy lasers at the National Ignition Facility in the US, which was designed specifically to boost fusion research."

A capsule lined with isotopes of Hydrogen "is placed inside a gold cylinder, when the 192 lasers are fired, they hit the capsule and indirectly cause a fusion reaction. The lasers hit the gold container, which emit X-rays that heat the pellet and make it implode, causing a fusion reaction. According to Debbie Callahan, a co-author of the study: “When the lasers are fired, the capsule is compressed 35 times. That is like compressing a basketball to the size of a pea.” The compression produces immense pressure and temperature, leading to a fusion reaction. Problems with the process were overcome last September, when, for the first time, Hurricane was able to produce more energy output from a fusion reaction than the lasers put into it. Since then, he has been able to repeat the experiment."

Methane burned vs. methane leaked: Fracking’s impact on climate change

Ars does a nice job diving into the question of Methane burned vs. methane leaked: Fracking’s impact on climate change. "So what’s the bottom line? Is America’s shale gas revolution helping or harming efforts to reduce climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions? Most estimates put the amount of methane currently leaking into the atmosphere from shale gas in the neighborhood of two percent. Insofar as natural gas is displacing coal-burning power plants, it takes at least four percent leakage—up to nearly eight percent if the oldest, least-efficient coal plants are the ones displaced—for natural gas to fail to yield greenhouse savings over the short-term, 20-year timeframe."

How ski jumping gets Olympic judging right (and figure skating gets it wrong)

How ski jumping gets Olympic judging right (and figure skating gets it wrong)

"Both ski jumping and figure skating have nationalistic judging biases, where judges give higher scores to athletes from their countries.  But the sports take very different approaches to dealing with this.  Ski jumping has its international federation select the judges for competitions like the Olympics, and I find that they select the least biased judges.  Figure skating lets its national federations select the judges, and my research showed that they select the most biased judges.

This creates different incentives for judges. Ski jumping judges display less nationalism in lower-level competitions — it appears they keep their nationalism under wraps in less important contests to avoid missing their chance at judging the Olympics. Figure skating judges are actually more biased in the lesser contests; they may actually be more biased than they would like to be due to pressure from their federations."

"The dysfunctionality of the sport is also revealed by how it reacted to the 2002 judging scandal. The International Skating Union made a couple of sensible reforms, such as increasing the size of the judging panel (at least temporarily) and making the scoring system more objective (although some think they went too far). But most of their response consisted of hiding the evidence of bias. The ISU stopped revealing which judge gave which score, making it much harder for competitors and fans to see whether the judging was fair. The ISU even went back and altered online score sheets from earlier competitions, obfuscating which judge gave which score and even which country each judge represented. They also began randomly dropping scores from three out of 12 judges. As any statistician can tell you, an average of nine out of 12 scores is essentially the average of the 12 scores plus a random number. When Yale statistics professor Jay Emerson noticed that in one case this randomness had altered who won a medal, it appears that the ISU responded by scrambling the order that scores were reported on score sheets. The only plausible purpose of this change was to make it harder to identify cases where randomness had affected results. All this suggests that the focus has been on hiding problems rather than fixing them."

Survival vs Mortality Rates

The Incidental Economist wrote Horribly depressing news about mammograms and pointed to this video on Survival vs Mortality Rates.

Sid Caesar

Here are some Sid Caesar clips. I really wish some writers at SNL would watch these and learn.

I also really like seeing Imogene Coca in these. To me she'll always be the woman who read the comics to us (and I'm not sure if on the radio or on television) during a newspaper strike when I was a kid.

To me, this was by far the most surprising paragraph in his obituary: "He was also given to explosive rages. Mr. Caesar once dangled a terrified Mr. Brooks from an 18th-story window until colleagues restrained him. With one punch, he knocked out a horse that had thrown his wife off its back, a scene that Mr. Brooks replayed in his movie Blazing Saddles."

Two Years? Really?

A few years ago, Massachusetts Rebuilt 14 Bridges in one Summer, on weekends only . Now the MBTA announced it's going to rebuild one subway station, an important one that connects two lines, and it's going to take, wait for it, two years. Coming March 22, 2014: Government Center Station Closure. I appreciate that they're still running trains through the station while work is going on (though they won't stop there) but it still seems like a long time. And their ‎pdf says that this plan provides accessibility 2 years earlier than alternatives! Glad I don't go to Government Center much.

Cracking Linksys “Encryption”

Cracking Linksys “Encryption” is kinda hilarious (and sad). They started "encrypting" their config file and apparently they just did XOR with 0xFF. They should have just used rot13. I really think that as an industry, there needs to be some real penalty for doing crap like this, otherwise nothing will change.

Oppressed Majority

Oppressed Majority is a French short film that shows society's gender biases by reversing roles. Nicely done. (Maybe NSFW because of a little nudity, but in a tasteful way and with a point)

Locked in the Cabinet

Finally got around to reading Glenn Thrush's Locked in the Cabinet. Nice piece on the politics of being a Secretary of something or other.